Coatings World - December 2015

to recycle, particularly by reusing them, once they reach the end of their conventional life cycle.

“Closed loop schemes help to make
sustainability an even bigger force,” ex-
plained Tom Bowtell, chief executive of
the British Coatings Federation (BCF).
“The more people start to talk about sus-
tainability and the circular economy the
more they will understand that sustain-
ability is part of the solution to the issues
of resources and global warming.”
The BCF has just launched a campaign
in the UK, called Paintcare, which is one
of the first of its kind in Europe, for the
remanufacture of waste decorative paint,
mainly in the DIY sector.

Coatings and raw materials companies are having to reconsider their sustainability policies in the light of circular economy initiatives.

“The circular economy will change things,” said Dirk Voeste, vice president, sustainable strategy, at BASF, a pace setter in sustainability initiatives in the coatings sector because of its position as both a coatings and raw materials producer.

“We’re now thinking about how we
deal with closed loop systems in the con-
text of sustainability,” he continued. “We
need to start to increase the performance
of our products in terms of durability
because that helps to make better use of
resources. We have to think about de-
signing products to ensure that they are
recyclable, which will be a process begin-
ning at the R&D stage.”
He was speaking during an interview
with Coatings World after giving a pre-
sentation on the company’s sustainabil-
ity strategy at a conference at Windsor,
England, in November organized by
Sustainable Brands London.

BASF, which in addition to produc-
ing coatings also makes resins, pigments
and other coatings ingredients, empha-
sizes the importance of helping to en-
courage sustainability along the length
of value chains.

“We look at value chains in terms of their sustainability requirements and how much sustainability initiative can benefit customers along the chains, not just with products but with processes,” he said.

He used as an example the company’s CathoGuard process for OEM coatings which, as a result of the first layer eliminating the primer and baking steps, reduces energy consumption, greenhouse gases and emissions of volatile organic compounds.

The company’s present sustainability policy has been based on the assessment of around 60,000 products and the staging of 180 workshops of employees and, in some cases, customer representatives.

Its key objective is to increase the proportion of total sales provided by what it calls “accelerators” or those contributing substantially to sustainability in value chains. Its target for 2020 is a 28-per- cent share of total sales from accelerators against a current 23 percent worth around € 15 billion ( $16 billion).

“Each of our strategic business units, including coatings, now has an individual accelerator target,” said Voeste.

Circular economy schemes can help companies achieve their sustainability objectives in areas like energy consumption.

“Remanufacturing of coatings can
save a lot of energy,” Bowtell said.
“Around 75 percent of the carbon foot-
print in the making of paints comes from
the production of energy intensive raw
materials like titanium dioxide.”
BCF’s PaintCare campaign, which has
the same brand name as a paint recycling
scheme in North America, has put for-
ward 15 proposals for action by the paint
and waste industry and central and lo-
cal government in the UK. The aim is to
use a large proportion of the 50 million
liters or 71,500 metric tons of leftover
decorative paint each year to establish a
new remanufacturing sector.

“Only 2 percent of the leftover
paint is reused or remanufactured,” said
Bowtell. “Yet it is technically feasible
to turn around 40 percent of this waste
back into new paint.”
Currently 29 percent of leftover paint
is landfilled, 19 percent incinerated with
energy recovery and 48 percent without
and 2 percent poured down the drain.

A major obstacle previously to the marketing of remanufactured paint has been the lack of quality standards. So PaintCare is urging the paint industry to introduce a remanufacturing quality protocol. It also wants the paint and waste industries to join together with academia to find solutions for leftovers which cannot be remanufactured into new paint by using them as raw materials for concrete and other products.

PaintCare is calling on local authorities and the waste industry to stop land-filling liquid paint by ensuring that their waste recycling centres accept liquid paint. Central government is being exhorted by the campaign to specify in 5 percent of government paint contracts the use of a “significant” proportion of remanufactured content.

“The process for remanufacturing
paint is labor intensive,” Bowtell ex-
plained. “So in comparison to production
processes for making normal paint it is
expensive, which could be an obstacle to
finding markets for reused paints. That
is why it is important that industry, gov-
ernment, retailers and other stakeholders
have to come together to make the proj-
ect a success.”
Despite the relatively high production
costs, industry is investing in waste paint
solutions. One of the country’s leading
waste companies has recently opened a
paint remanufacturing pilot plant. The
circular economy is not only giving a
new meaning to sustainability but dem-
onstrating in the coatings sector how it
can add value to products previously re-
garded as waste. CW